Blu ray rips

I have unfortunately ripped some of my blu rays to mkv files a few months back. Now I am organizing all my media files in itunes. So I need to convert them to mp4. I am using handbrake to do so. I used the apple tv 2 preset and some of my mkv files which were of 8 gb size, have been reduced to 4 gb. Does this mean a huge loss in quality ?

I've converted my Blu-Rays via Handbrake (lowered the quality setting to 23) to keep ATV2 from stuttering on high motion scenes. Perhaps not as pixel perfect as the original but are absolutely HD enough for us.
Remember the ATV2 is only 720p so no matter what you've got less resolution than a 1080p source.

Btw, what do you mean by atv being 720p ? Does it mean it cannot process 1080p or it converts 1080 to 720. Either way that sucks !

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The ATV will take a 1080p input stream, but only put out a 720p stream to the TV. Thus you can rip into 1080p but it will still only display 720p. Here's to hoping for a new ATV or even better, a software update.

Also I keep hearing about some reduction in audio quality when converting from mkv to mp4. I am a complete newbie and dont understand the issues. So whats the best way to convert ? Handbrake or visualhub or something else

Also I keep hearing about some reduction in audio quality when converting from mkv to mp4. I am a complete newbie and dont understand the issues. So whats the best way to convert ? Handbrake or visualhub or something else

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Of course there will be a reduction in audio quality. Blu-Ray has lossless audio format generally (such as DTS-MA) which Apple TV/2 does not support. Handbrake will convert such high-quality audio to AC3 640KB which is very good but obviously not as good as the Blu-Ray source.

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